By Nora Bergstrom, WeVote Intern
Political parties are a familiar concept to American voters. Republican or Democratic, Green or Libertarian. Political parties are an instrumental part of the electoral process for voters and candidates running for office. Voters and politicians choose a party to affiliate with early in their political experiences. Considering how significant the parties are in today’s political landscape, it’s important to understand the history behind our party system, how they came to be, and their primary purpose.
Why do political parties exist in the first place? Why are they important to American democracy? This article follows the work of two political scientists, John Aldrich and Russell J. Dalton, as they uncover the real reasons for the United States’ powerful two-party system. Taking a deep dive into the complex world of political parties, this article also explores how parties influence the behavior of both voters and politicians.
The History of American Political Parties
The crucial debate over the ratification of The Constitution in the 1780s led to the formation of political parties. The election of 1792 formally marked the establishment of two distinct U.S. political parties: Federalists and Democratic-Republicans.
Over two centuries later, it is important to understand why these two distinct parties were established and how this two-party divide has continued in modern-day politics.
Many Americans attribute the rise in political polarization in recent years, or intense gridlock within governmental systems, to the two-party system. Though the long-standing American party system has flaws, parties are essential to American democracy for several reasons.
In John Aldrich’s 1995 book titled “Why Parties?: A Second Look” and Russell J. Dalton’s 2016 study “Party Identification and Its Implications,” both political scientists outline and analyze these important reasons.
Why Politicians Need Parties
- Organizing and Gaining Support
Aldrich emphasizes the crucial role parties play in helping politicians get elected. With individual motivations at play, political candidates use parties to organize a critical mass of voters and gain campaign support. This implies that parties are only as strong as politicians need them to be. The more they rely on parties, the stronger they are.
- Power and Resources
The massive two-party system has historically encouraged candidates to affiliate with one party or the other due to the influence and resources the major parties can provide. Running as an individual is far more difficult than choosing to affiliate with a party.
Why Voters Need Parties
The use of political parties by politicians has to do directly with voters. Between the many political parties, policies, and elections, it is challenging for typical American voters to keep up with the information necessary to make informed political decisions. The U.S. is unique; voters make many different electoral decisions at the local, state, and federal levels.
- Using Party Affiliation as a Shortcut
According to Dalton, party affiliation is a psychological concept socialized in children at a young age. Parents and childhood environments shape how children perceive political parties. Evidence suggests that this often creates an early sense of identification with a particular party that strengthens over a voter’s lifetime.
Each major party represents a broad set of policy principles with which voters can identify. Voters and politicians often affiliate with the party that closely matches their policy interests.
Aldrich explains that this allows voters to develop informational shortcuts when choosing to support or oppose particular politicians who identify with the party’s policy brand. Instead of researching each policy and candidate, voters may rely on their party’s policy stances to make decisions on an entire slate of candidates at once.
- Comfort in Decision-Making
Dalton describes how partisanship, or identification with a particular party, gives voters an informational shortcut that assists in their decision-making. It also means that voters can feel comfortable and make reasonable voting decisions. Candidates affiliated with a party will likely vote on policy along party lines. This gives voters a sense of comfort when voting for the party they affiliate with. They can rely on the fact that their representatives will continue to represent their party’s interests while in office.
- Mobilization and Participation
With so many elections to participate in and the increase in apathy towards voting in recent years, parties can also help motivate voters to show support for their party’s candidates. Dalton describes that having two major political parties in the U.S. creates a sense of urgency in those with strong partisan beliefs to get out and support their side to beat out the other party. This concept also shows off the incentive candidates have to affiliate with a major party to gain the support of active and participating voters.
Why Political Parties Matter to Democracy
Finally, when answering why parties exist in the U.S., it is important to understand the value of political competition. When the U.S. was founded, there was no intention of creating a multi-party system. How did the nation arrive at the massive two-party system present today?
Soon after the nation’s founding, the necessity of a multi-party, competitive system was discovered. Having a two-party system ensures accountability of the government and politicians. When the party in power is not performing well, voters can vote them out of office and the other major party into office. Parties are important because they help maintain a democracy in which voters have the freedom to choose.
Modern-Day Issues to Consider
The two-party system also has implications for American democracy. Polarization and partisanship are on the rise in the U.S., meaning that issues intensify with the informational shortcuts that parties create for voters.
The studies reviewed in this article emphasize the importance of political parties and their representatives being truthful when discussing policy and politics. This process falls apart without this truth. Voters can no longer make reasonable decisions that align with their true beliefs when they are presented with false information by extremist parties and politicians.
Conclusion
When used correctly, political parties are valuable tools for politicians and voters. Parties allow voters to hold their representatives accountable and permit politicians to gain support to win elections. Understanding the reasons for having political parties and what role they play in voter behavior helps voters make more informed decisions on Election Day.
About WeVote:
WeVote is a 100% volunteer-driven non-profit with a mission to build the next generation of voting tech so voters at a hyper-local level can be informed on the issues they care about, curated by people they trust. By connecting neighbor with neighbor and friend with friend, we help voters cut through the clutter to understand what’s on their ballot. The open platform lets anybody create and share voter guides that aggregate information and opinions across networks so you can help others become better voters too. Vote red, vote blue, vote rainbows; we don’t care—we just want you to vote, and that’s why we’re here.
References:
Dalton, Russell J. “Party Identification and Its Implications | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics.” (2022).
Aldrich, John H. Why Parties? : A Second Look. [2nd ed.], University of Chicago Press, 2011.
Leave a Reply